Thank you, 'bee! You have put all of this in perspective more eloquently than I could manage.
I'm not sure that what's happened to our culture since the '60s is wholly good or ill. In every qualitative sense I can think of we have more freedom, as Americans, than we had fifty years ago. We have not matched this with the responsibility that's supposed to come with freedom. The answer, in my reckoning, is not to reduce freedom but to increase responsibility.
Inasmuch as the government has any business being involved with marriage, it should be in encouraging the development of a well-educated, self-reliant and egalitarian society. Who you marry doesn't matter. It's not a choice the government should be involved with. If the government wanted to save marriage, it would be doing everything possible to end domestic violence, which is actually destroying marriages and harming our society. It isn't.
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Date: 2004-05-22 12:01 pm (UTC)I'm not sure that what's happened to our culture since the '60s is wholly good or ill. In every qualitative sense I can think of we have more freedom, as Americans, than we had fifty years ago. We have not matched this with the responsibility that's supposed to come with freedom. The answer, in my reckoning, is not to reduce freedom but to increase responsibility.
Inasmuch as the government has any business being involved with marriage, it should be in encouraging the development of a well-educated, self-reliant and egalitarian society. Who you marry doesn't matter. It's not a choice the government should be involved with. If the government wanted to save marriage, it would be doing everything possible to end domestic violence, which is actually destroying marriages and harming our society. It isn't.